As a child I played with National Geographic magazines. I cut the photos carefully from their binding and positioned them on my bedroom floor. I stood in the center of each photo and communed with the imagined essence of another world. For as long as I can remember, the power and mystery of place captivated my spirit and shook my bones with a voracious sense of wonder.

In 2005, when I was 22-years-old, I landed in Rio de Janeiro with a large university grant. I carried addresses and phone numbers for various nonprofits where I’d been contracted to teach hip-hop and English to Brazilian youth. In my mind, I had plans to study dance all around the country. As a taxi drove me at a furious pace through Rio’s tangled maze of steep hillside cobblestone, one clear thought rang out.

“I’m too sensitive for a city like this.“

I was right, but I’d soon learn I didn’t care. I cared about discovering how my sensitivity interacted with this new world. I wanted to see where the path of contradiction would lead me.

It first led me to a brown-eyed man who stalled my heart when his smile carved two dimples beside the corner of his mouth. The enchantment I felt on the nights I walked arm and arm beside him wasn’t simply the magic of being young and falling in love in a foreign country. It was the sensation of being in the presence of a gatekeeper. The one who stands on the threshold of where you’ve been and where you are going. The one who beckons you in such an alluring way you have no choice but to cross over, regardless of whether or not they follow behind you.

On one typically sweltering Rio afternoon, my Brazilian boyfriend invited me to meet him at a beach side park where his dance company rehearsed every day. The company consisted of a dedicated crew of teenagers with a shocking well of talent and a profound enthusiasm for hip-hop dance.

For the first month I sat mesmerized and watched them rehearse. They trained and created movement, yelled out to keep going when they were exhausted, and celebrated each other’s growth. For the second month I stood in the back row of their concrete stage, dancing alongside them. The third month my Brazilian boyfriend broke my heart. I debated ever returning to that park where I had spent the last 60 days humming with a familiar sense of wonder shaking in my bones.

“I’m too sensitive to handle this,” I thought.

Yet I found myself back at their concrete stage, terrified and uncertain. The community of dancers I’d been spending everyday with didn’t care where I’d been or who I’d dated. They only cared that when we danced we sought entry into the same unspeakable passion. Echoing every day around the park was the soundtrack of their excitement and it created a new compass within me. My brown-eyed ex ignored me, but one day it finally stopped mattering.

On the other side of the threshold the view was different. The narrative had changed. It was no longer about falling in love with a man. It was about falling in love with the story of a group of people. I began coming to practice with a camcorder in my hand. The first time I pressed record my breath stalled and my heartbeat quickened. The earth pressed into my feet. I felt certain I was exactly where I needed to be.

Since that initial discovery I’ve been growing into the craft of filmmaking, following this community of dancers around Brazil and other parts of the world as their story widens. I’ve made a hundred amateur mistakes and another hundred skillful, intuitive choices. I’ve kept myself in the center of my sensitivity even when the pressure mounted because that sensitivity is ultimately what makes me an alert storyteller. I have cherished every moment with the community I’ve filmed. I’ve fallen in love over and over and over again.

My editor and I recently put the finishing touches on Believe The Beat, the feature length documentary that began eight years ago, when a sweet boy asked me my name after a dance class on a clear night in a loud city. There is sometimes a voice inside me that yearns to omit this piece of the story.

“I went to Brazil to make a film,” I hear myself think. “I researched and I planned my strategy. I was intentional and grounded and focused from the start.”

Then the rest of me rushes in. I am reminded of the little girl who stood on photos of foreign lands with the unknown looming. Who closed her eyes and said yes to a million possible truths.

This is what the world asks us to do. Follow the winding, complicated path toward voracious wonder. Say yes to the moments that enchant and challenge and surprise us. Walk across the threshold when the gate swings open and keep moving forward as it shuts.

Fabio grew up in Capim Grosso, light-years away from the hustle and bustle of Rio de Janeiro and SÃ£o Paolo. Nearly 10 years ago, wanting to increase local access to educational and cultural programming that he saw in bigger cities, Fabio set to work on what would become the AEC-TEA. He quickly realized though that without the major institutions of a big city, the group lacked the experts who could move forward with the type of programming that capimgrossenses had been cut off from.

Sacia, a native of Oregon, was planning a quick vacation to Brazil in 2003 and wanted to supplement her cultural experience by volunteering for a few months with a local nonprofit organization. After searching Idealist, she responded to an ad for volunteer English teachers. She arrived to find an organization still operating out of Fabio’s family’s garage. Over the first couple of months, she helped start the center’s first English language programs and decided that her vacation was over. She was going to stay.

And the rest is history

Working alongside Fabio for the past seven years, Sacia and nearly 100 other volunteers who have responded to AEC-TEAs calls for volunteers on Idealist have developed language and teacher training courses, volunteered with local schools, trained local youth leaders, helped construct a new building, and obtained grants from the Brazilian government to offer free theater and photography courses, as well as the community’s only movie theater.

Besides that, the initial Idealist listing was the launching point for Sacia and Fabio’s marriage. Who knew one volunteer ad could affect so greatly the history of two individuals and an entire community?

You, too, can live happily ever after!

If you work with an organization that could use the help of international volunteers, consider posting an opportunity on Idealist.org.

New to the scene and looking to volunteer abroad (and potentially meet your future spouse (no promises)? Check out our resource center on international volunteerism.

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[This blog entry appeared on an older version of Idealist; any broken links are a result of having re-launched our site in Fall 2010.]